I shared a story with Steven about my mother and a specific dish that I have a personal heartfelt attachment to. With this story I’mm creating a cookbook about the food my mother made for me when I was younger with the exact recipe! It’s somewhat crazy to try and make this cookbook without getting hungry, well thats just me. I also think it’s very sad if you’ve got no story to share. (Where’s your childhood!)
First off i know the book is going to be the focus for the next ten weeks. The first grid was be simple. However, I know as the assignment progresses the grid will become far more complex (Like the one we are currently doing!): currently I have started designing & composing the Cookbook | Type Specimen | Memoir. The final will be a 16-page, saddle-stitched book with self-wrappers.
Using the typeface Sabon, I printed an upper and lower case alphabet on 11 x 17 tabloid laser paper so the lowercase x (the x-height) is nine picas high (1.5 inches), the height of the caps will follow. 26 Uppercase letters A–Z + ampersand and 26 lower case letters a–z. I Adjusted my leading to fit U&lc on two sheets of 11 x 17 tabloid. Repeated the process for eight core fonts: Baskerville, Bodoni, Clarendon, Gill Sans, Helvetica, Futura, and Rockwell. Traced these alphabets onto tracing paper— perfectly!
DRAW
Chose a typeface from our list—based on a specific æsthetic aspect of its design that appeals to me.
In my sketchbook, I drew a minimum of ten 4 x 6 inch boxes, drawing the character freehand to fit the boxes. I practiced until I could draw it perfectly. You have to pay special attention to the letterform proportions.
CARVE
After tracing the best image onto tracing paper with a soft pencil, I now have to reverse the tracing paper onto the carving block and burnish the back of the paper until my image is transferred onto the block. The carved letterform could either be a positive or negative image. Using the finest #1 blade in the carving tool I outlined the image. I carefully removed the material. No need to cut deep. Blocks are somewhat fragile so handling with care is key.
PRINT
After inking the image with the brayer I rolled out an even layer of ink onto the block. Trying not to over-ink. I then placed the block ink-side down onto the print paper and apply light but even pressure all-over the block. Pulled the block off the print slowly and ENJOYEEEEED what I call the eureka moment—the second a student views the print they just pulled!
My main contribution to this workshop was bringing the idea up for making collages, in my mind I thought my group members wouldn’t really welcome the idea, but I was wrong. The embraced it (maybe because we didn’t have to buy anything) however, it was a totally great experience, especially when we had to do the mock-ups in class before the real thing.
Initially my feeling towards the workshop was total boredom. I felt it was just going to be my group and I pulling our skills together to just create and complete a workshop and probably never talk about it again. However this was far beyond what I even imagined and I’m even sure what Jen imagined. We all worked together, not just in our individual groups, but as a big community. Taking and sharing pictures amongst ourselves, helping other groups with their ideas and also generally having a great time. Getting people to do the workshop was definitely not an easy task, but we all tried our best to get each other’s participants to try other group’s workshops, which I felt was awesome.
I ultimately enjoyed myself, I played music (which was absolutely my favorite part, because we all had fun listening to some old jams!), took pictures, got people to come try our awesome collages and make postcards, danced around a bit and made new friends. I look forward to having more awesome activities like this, because it not only helps us as artists by learning new skills but goes further to help create bigger and better communities.
Robert Irwin was born in 1928 in Long Beach, California. He did his time in the united states army for a year – 1946 to 1947. Soon after this, he attended several art institutes : Otis Art Institute, Jepson Art Institute and Chouinard Art Institute. Robert Irwin really explored perception as the fundamental issue of art. He began as a painter in the 1950s and became the pioneer of the L.A.-based “Light and Space” movement in the 1960s, has, through a continual breaking down of the frame, come to regard the role of art as “conditional,” or something that works in and responds to the specific surrounding world of experience. Irwin has conceived fifty-five site-conditional projects since 1975, ranging from the architectural and grounds design of Dia: Beacon Center for the Arts (completed in 2003) to the lush Central Gardens for the Getty Center in Los Angeles, California (completed in 2005). Robert Irwin became the first artist to receive the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur “Genius” Award in 1984. Robert Irwin has been with the Gallery since 1966.
Central Gardens for the Getty Center
The Central Garden, created by artist Robert Irwin, lies at the heart of the Getty Center. The 134,000-square-foot design features a natural ravine and tree-lined walkway that leads the visitor through an extraordinary experience of sights, sounds, and scents.
The walkway traverses a stream that winds through a variety of plants and gradually descends to a plaza where bougainvillea arbors provide scale and a sense of intimacy. Continuing through the plaza, the stream cascades over a stone waterfall or “chadar,” into a pool with a floating maze of azaleas. Specialty gardens encircle the pool. All of the foliage and materials of the garden have been selected to accentuate the interplay of light, color, and reflection.
Irwin began planning the Central Garden in 1992, as a key part of the Getty Center project. Since the Center opened in 1997, the Central Garden has evolved as its plants have grown and been trimmed. New plants are constantly being added to the palette. Irwin’s statement “Always changing, never twice the same” is carved into the plaza floor, reminding visitors of the ever-changing nature of this living work of art.
Dia Beacon
Robert Irwin’s work at Dia:Beacon may elude the casual visitor. It consists of a master plan for the museum and its outdoor spaces, as well as design work on numerous aspects of the project, most notably the extensive landscape environment, where Irwin was involved in every aspect of the plantings, paving and fencing, and windows and doors.
Most important, Irwin helped Dia consider the design of the Beacon project in experiential and environmental terms as a totality—from the visitor’s entrance, by car or by foot, down a driveway marked at its top by a gate and a new copper beech tree, through an orchard that serves as a parking lot, into a plaza that signals one’s arrival at the museum, into either a café and bookshop or the newly constructed entrance to the galleries, and from there down any of a number of possible paths through the museum’s interior and into the artists’ spaces, each specifically designed by the artist in question and/or by Dia to accommodate the work on view. Irwin’s work in Beacon lay across the borders of a number of different roles—landscape designer, architect, aesthetic philosopher—in a manner completely consistent with his practice as an artist, in which, among other things, he has questioned exactly where the boundaries lie around the role of the artist today.
